I design how a service makes someone feel. Not just whether it works.
I'm focused on working with local councils, community organisations, and public services across Wiltshire and Hampshire. Understanding what residents actually experience, and where the gaps are, so asking for help doesn't feel harder than the problem itself.
Understand the human before you design the solution.
I've lived in Salisbury for over twenty years. I came from London and stayed, which if you know Salisbury, makes complete sense.
Before starting Research by Robin, I spent over a decade working inside central government, followed by three years at Roke as a business analyst on public sector programmes, running discovery work, mapping requirements, and facilitating stakeholder workshops including for NHS England.
What I kept noticing, across all of it, was the same thing: the people these services were designed to help were rarely the people anyone had actually spoken to.
In 2022 I was diagnosed with ADHD, after recognising myself in my son's assessment. It clarified a lot, including why I find it genuinely hard to ignore a service that makes someone feel excluded or like a burden. Research by Robin came out of that. A practice built on real public sector experience, rooted in this part of the world, focused on the communities services most often get wrong.
- Home Office
- Department of Health
- UKHSA
- National Crime Agency (via Roke)
- Metropolitan Police
- London Ambulance Service
- NHS England
Service design for real places and real people.
I work at the point where how a service is designed meets how it's actually experienced. Accessibility isn't a separate workstream. It's woven into everything I do.
Community Co-Design
Involving residents in shaping services from the start, not testing a finished thing at the end. The people closest to the problem usually have the clearest view of it.
Service Blueprinting
Mapping what residents experience, what staff do behind the scenes, and where the two fall apart. Useful when services are being reorganised or merged and no one is quite sure what the full picture looks like yet.
Research and Insight
Finding out what people actually think, feel, and struggle with, through interviews, observation, and careful analysis. Research that gives you something real to act on, not a deck nobody reads past page four.
Community Needs Assessment
Understanding what a community needs before you redesign a service or change a facility. The work that should happen before the planning, not after the complaints.
Workshops and Facilitation
Structured sessions that help teams and communities have the conversations they need to have. The honest ones. The kind that usually only happen in the car park afterwards.
Embedding Accessibility
Inclusion built into the research and design process from the start, not added at the end when it's expensive to fix. I work with public sector teams to understand how services feel to disabled people, neurodivergent users, and anyone the standard assumptions leave out.
Staying in the patch. Singing in winter.
Robins don't migrate. They stay in their patch, know the local landscape, and sing even in the depths of winter.
I chose the name deliberately. I didn't come to Wiltshire for a project and leave when it finished. I've been here for over twenty years. This is my community too, the same parks, the same services, the same streets that work brilliantly for some people and quietly fail others.
That's the kind of practice I'm building. Not parachuting in with a generic framework, but doing the slower, more careful work of understanding a specific place and the people in it.
Building the portfolio. Doing the work.
I'm taking on a small number of pro-bono projects with charities, CICs, and community organisations ahead of my full practice launch in 2027. If your organisation has a service that's failing the people it's meant to help, I'd like to hear about it.
Talk to me about your projectGot a problem worth solving?
Tell me about the service, the community, and where you think it's going wrong. I'll come back to you within two working days. Faster if it's a really good problem.
hello@researchbyrobin.co.ukBased in Salisbury. Working across Wiltshire, Hampshire and beyond.